Gamescom 2011 - Day One of the Public Event!

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What a crazy day! The doors opened at 9, so of course the people started trickling in at 8:30. It seemed low-key and relaxed but when the clock hit 9, the booth was suddenly packed with people.

"What is this game?"

"WildStar? Is this an MMO?"

"Carbine Studios? Who is that?"

Those were just a few of the questions we were asked when people first arrived at the booth, and we did everything we could to help people understand what they were getting into with WildStar. After getting a hands-on, people immediately started asking another question:

"When is this game coming out?"

And, of course, right now we have to give you the standard, tried-and-true answer - It'll be done when it's done.

We don't say this glibly, though. The reason we announced and brought a playable demo to gamescom at the same time is because we mean what we say: we want people to play how they want, with who they want. How we do it is by listening to you, the community. And how we do that is giving you the game to play right now! That's why we're at gamescom with thousands of fan crowded into our booth. At 9 in the morning. And that's just the beginning of the day

We filled the rest of the day entertaining the fans in our booth with live demos of WildStar (when they weren't playing it themselves) and two Q&A sessions with members of the Carbine dev team.

Producer Troy Hewitt, Senior Community Manager Robert Land, Art Director Matt Mocarski, and European Community Lead Loic Claveau fielded questions about live GM events, how you get into the industry, and where we get inspiration when making a game.

Elsewhere, Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney, Lead Content Designer Mike Donatelli, and Lead Creative Writer Chad Moore were doing demos of the game to members of the press aided by Designer Nick Roth, Associate Designer Paul Mattson, and Senior Scripter Doug Koup. Reports from the trenches are that it went well and WildStar was very well-received! Congratulations to everyone involved!

Sadly, it was not to be all happiness and fortuitous circumstance! A dark cloud hovered over the booth - the heat in the room coupled with the heat of the computers caused a few of our machines to be taken out of commission. Our IT guys we on top of it, though, and got them back to tip-top condition as fast as they could.

All told, our first day with the public at gamescom was an amazing experience and we were thrilled to show the game! Everyone on the Carbine Crew at gamescom love being in Germany and we thank everyone for such a great reception for WildStar and its little crew of developers.

Extra-special thanks to our friends (and booth buddies) at ArenaNet. It's a blast working with you and we look forward to doing so again in the future!